gray wolf shot

This week, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials gave the media some incredibly disheartening news. DNA evidence confirmed that a gray wolf shot and killed by a hunter in December in southern Utah was none other than Echo, a three-year-old female who had journeyed over 750 miles since being collared in Wyoming at the start of 2014. Echo's journey was followed by schoolchildren across the country. It was also heralded as a sign that gray wolves, which had been purged from the Grand Canyon region by a government eradication program in the early 19th century, were making a slow but steady comeback.